Partnerships between public and private sectors in Brazil: towards efficiency?

Abstract

This research was developed to understand the role played by partnerships between public and private sectors in Brazil, especially with regard to increasing efficiency in the provision of public services. Through the use of historical and dialectical methods, anchored in bibliographic and documentary research, alongside indirect data analysis, we discuss the arguments in favor of and against the use of such partnerships within the Brazilian destatization program, as an instrument to promote the rights of the collectivity. After drawing a historical line of the construction of the third way, in which partnerships arise, and debating the fundamentals of state subsidiarity, it appears that there is a mystification of state inefficiency and market superiority. Furthermore, although the number of initiatives and signed contracts has increased over the years and has been encouraged by the government, partnerships are still ineffective in practice. Partnerships, so-called innovative arrangements, are focused on old (neo) liberal practices, moving society away from public decision-making processes and weakening rights on behalf of profit, consisting in a form of transfer of capital from the State to small private groups. Sometimes there is also a lack of transparency in the actions of the private partner and the inspections by the public partner are insufficient.